A report has found that 25.8% of female Victoria police employees and 9.8% of male employees reported experiencing sexual harassment at work.
Photograph: Tracey Nearmy/AAP

Victoria police has “unacceptably high” levels of sexual harassment and discrimination, with 25.8% of female employees and 9.8% of male employees reporting having experienced sexual harassment at work, a report by the state’s human rights body has found.

Stronger powers under the Equal Opportunity Act 2010 would allow VEOHRC to conduct similar work on less open organisations. An attempt to conduct a similar investigation into Victoria’s fire services in 2016 was boycotted.

Commissioner Kristen Hilton said the leadership shown by the top ranks of Victoria police was “absolutely critical” to achieving systemic change, and commended the organisation for being prepared to be criticised in public for its failings.

“They have been prepared to listen to the quite harrowing stories of members in their workforce, and that’s shown quite a lot of humility,” Hilton told Guardian Australia. “Being able to say: ‘Yep, we did not protect our people very well’.”

In some areas, the latest report found, police officers were still not being protected. A victim-centric complaints process, recommended in the first report in 2015, has not been established.

Respondents to a survey of Victoria police staff in late 2018 said that senior officers were still able to get away with harassment and 30% said they feared retribution if they reported harassment or discrimination.

One respondent said that personal information about their private life “was shared amongst other employees and discussed openly in attempts to discredit my reputation”.

But Hilton said in other areas of structural change there had been significant improvement and genuine commitment to gender equality.

Victoria police has said it is committed to becoming a gender-equitable organisation both for the sake of its staff and to better deal with family violence, which makes up between 40-60% of police call-outs.

Hilton said assistant commissioner Luke Cornelius told her last week that in the past, a woman who attended a police station to make a complaint of family violence might have been told “come back when you’ve got bruises”.

“It was just apparent to them that views inside the organisation around not respecting women, or sidelining women, or denigrating women, and working in an environment which was not gender equitable, was influencing the way in which they responded to or understood family violence,” Hilton said.

In a foreword to the report, commissioner Graham Ashton said Victoria police would “maintain an explicit focus on gender equality as this will give us the best chance of addressing the drivers of sexual harassment, sex discrimination and predatory behaviour”.

“I am confident that this is work we are capable of leading, both for the benefit of our employees and the community,” he said.

The gender pay gap in the organisation has narrowed by almost 2% since a salary audit was conducted in 2016, falling from 9.5% – with women earning an average salary of $78,508 compared with an average salary of $86,734 for men – to 7.6% in 2018.

Women received 40% of promotions to command appointments between 2015 and 2018, and one in 10 women who applied for a promotion in that period were successful, compared with one in 20 men.

Victoria police has committed to a 50:50 target for both recruitment and promotion and has committed to achieving gender equality in its organisation by 2030.